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15 July 2016

The diversity of life across much of Earth has plunged below 'safe' levels

The total abundance of species occurring in primary vegetation (A), and the richness of species occurring in primary vegetation (B).

A new paper reports that over half of Earth’s land area has suffered biodiversity loss beyond “safe limits.”

The study, released today in Science, compiles a global dataset of biodiversity change and compares it to human land use patterns. The analysis shows that 58 percent of Earth’s land, which is home to 71 percent of the human population, has surpassed a recently proposed safe limit for biodiversity loss, beyond which ecosystems may no longer support human societies.

While the news sounds dire, other ecologists contend that the very notion of setting “safe limits” is a danger in itself, and criticize this line-in-the-sand approach to assessing the planet’s ecological health. In fact, critics say setting a limit may do more harm than good.

The safe limit is defined as a 10 percent reduction in the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), a measure of population abundances across many species relative to their numbers in the preindustrial era. The measure comes from the Planetary Boundaries framework proposed in 2009 and updated in 2015, which aims to set limits on properties of Earth to ensure a “safe operating space” — that is, environmental conditions suitable for us agricultural, industrial humans.

The Planetary Boundaries (PBs) are based on measurable properties for nine categories including climate change, ocean acidification, and ozone depletion. For each category, scientists have tried to establish a safe zone, a zone of uncertainty, and a high-risk zone.

The study by Newbold and colleagues is the most comprehensive assessment to date of where we stand on the Planetary Boundary scale in terms of biodiversity.

It is “really an impressive analysis bringing to bear some of the best datasets that we have,” says biologist Tom Oliver of the University of Reading, who wasn’t involved in the study.

After analyzing over 2 million records of nearly 40,000 species from 20,000 sites, the authors report that on average biodiversity, as measured by BII, has fallen by 15 percent. This means most of Earth’s land and people are in areas beyond the safe limit, in the zone of uncertainty. Many species are critically threatened, and so are the services they provide humans such as pollination, decomposition, and sustenance.

The “fact that we’ve lost biodiversity isn’t surprising,” says Newbold. What is surprising is “the magnitude of the change … how much of the world’s land surface has gone past the boundary.”

Are We Really Past the Boundary?

However, determining where the safe limit is — and how much of the planet is past it — is problematic.

“This thing is a house of cards … one assumption after another,” says Erle Ellis, director of the Laboratory of Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The 10 percent reduction in BII marks the beginning of a large zone of uncertainty — from 10 percent to 70 percent reduction — over which scientists cannot be sure how the Earth System will respond.

One source of uncertainty is the influence of non-native species, which can help, hurt or have no effect on a given ecosystem. The health of an ecosystem also depends on complex interactions between species serving different functions. This balance is hard to quantify, let alone in a single number, such as BII.

For analogy, Ellis says, “Would you know whether your country is in good condition if you just had the GDP? GDP goes up during wars. Is that good?”

An earlier study on defining the PB for biodiversity recommended consideration of at least 22 variables, stating that single measures such as BII, “are unable to reflect the key features of biodiversity important for humanity.”

The PB scientists proposed BII as an “interim control variable” and Newbold admits that it “is just a provisional way of measuring pending better information.”

Despite the uncertainties, Oliver praised the Newbold study, saying, “the scientists are taking a brave step in going beyond just quantifying the extent of biodiversity decline to trying to link that to the impacts on people.”

Is There a Boundary?

Ellis also argues that the PBs are subjective and not scientifically determined. Moreover, they send a public message that the only reason to conserve nature is for the services it provides us.

“We don’t know what the safe limit is. We shouldn’t even try to find that out … Our goal is not to change the planet up to its safe limits,” says Ellis.

Reporting that we have crossed the safe limit for biodiversity loss can invoke both crisis mentality and complacency with regard to environmental action. The crisis mentality can lead to extreme actions, like how the threat of terrorism has been used to justify torture, says Ellis.

Alternatively, people may realize that we have passed this threshold without immediate negative consequences, and it “creates a false sense of security,” he adds.

Oliver supports the team’s decision to apply their data to the PB framework.

“Even though there can be large uncertainties and it can be uncomfortable for quantitative scientists … unless we can link what this means to people, it’s hard to persuade decision makers,” he says.

Newcomb acknowledges the criticisms of PBs, but feels that the importance of the study is the quantification of biodiversity loss.

“Whether you cast it in terms of Planetary Boundaries or not, we’ve lost a significant portion of biodiversity,” says Newcomb.

Parrhesia

The two all-time most popular posts of Transudationism

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Transudationism: mankinds' cosmic ideology.

SIC ITUR AD ASTRA!

Ascensional Transudation

Cosmic Evolution

All history is the history of the evolutionary transubstantiation of matter to Spirit via biological-life processes of Blood and Reason.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's concluding thoughts from his 1978 Harvard address, A World Split Apart

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's concluding thoughts from his famous 1978 Harvard address,"A World Split Apart":

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but - upward.

In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Neoconservatives used 9/11 to launch their plan for US world hegemony. Their plan fit with the interests of America’s ruling oligarchies. Wars are good for the profits of the military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us in vain a half century ago. American hegemony is good for the oil industry’s control over resources and resource flows. The transformation of the Middle East into a vast American puppet state serves well the Israel Lobby’s Zionist aspirations for Israeli territorial expansion.

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"The seed of the universe is the big bang, says Kyle McDermott in 'The Declaration of White Independence: The Founding Documents of Transudationism'. An explanation of this view which holds that all of current humanity and life on Earth today was intentionally set in motion all those billions of years ago, 'The Declaration of White Independence' probes matters of cosmological significance with straightforward candor and accessibility. Featuring intriguing concepts and ideas, 'The Declaration of White Independence' is highly recommended for metaphysical studies shelves."

The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes

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